Piarist Church in Cluj-Napoca

The Piarist Church, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, stands at 5 Universității Street in central Cluj, next to the main building of Babeș-Bolyai University. It was first known as the Jesuit Church and later as the University Church. It was the first Roman Catholic church built in Transylvania after the Protestant Reformation and the first Baroque religious building in the province. The Jesuits built it together with their college, on whose site the university's main building now stands. The foundation stone was laid on 13 March 1718 by Bishop György Mártonffy, and the works were completed in 1724. The church was consecrated on 13 May 1725 by the Roman Catholic Bishop of Alba Iulia, János Antalfi. After the Jesuit order was temporarily suppressed in 1773, Empress Maria Theresa gave the church, college and boarding school to the Piarist Order in 1776. The church has been restored several times, most recently in 2005-2006. The main façade, facing Universității Street, has two 45 m clock towers and, above the entrance, a relief of the Holy Trinity with the inscription "HONORI SANCTISSIMAE TRINITATIS"; the niches above the side entrances hold statues of Saints Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier by the Bavarian sculptor Johannes König. The single-nave interior, 45 m long and 24 m wide, has three side chapels on each side, the high altar dedicated to the Holy Trinity and the pulpit by Anton Schuchbauer, decorated with reliefs of the four Evangelists. Beneath the church is a crypt. The statue of the Virgin Mary, moved away by the communist authorities in 1959, stands in front of it again. The Piarist Church, today the Roman Catholic Holy Trinity Church, is a category A historic monument, LMI code CJ-II-m-A-07499. Did you know that in 1956 one of the largest anti-communist protests by Greek Catholic believers took place in front of this church? Thousands of people attended an open-air liturgy to show that the Greek Catholic Church, banned in 1948, still existed.